Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:11 pm Post subject: Sun disklabel? Do I have to use it? YES! If you wanna boot.

Im trying to install a new disk in my Ultra 5 and cant get the Sun disklabel right. The disk turns out at about one tenth of the correct size, around 4GB instead of 40GB.
Im only running linux on this box. Can I use a DOS partition table instead? The dos partion table happily shows the correct 40GB and everything is just peachy!
I can format, copy data restart the box and still access it. The big question is, can I use the DOS partition on my boot disk? I dont really want to install Gentoo just to find out. If some one has tried, let me know. If not, stay tuned for my results.

Or is there a way to get a working Sun label on the disk? 's' in fdisk cant do it.... Or atleast I cant do it with it
The disk is an ST340016A and it pretends to have:
16 heads.
63 sectors.
16383 cylinders.
Interleave 1:1
rpm 7200.

Last edited by nulljobb on Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:50 pm; edited 1 time in total

Way ahead of you! I was unable to find any good way to get a Sun label on a big disk (sept for a new'ish version of Solaris) Im installing a compact flash card as hda as we speak! ehhh... type...
There is no room to install another 3.5" disk in my Ultra 5.

Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:40 pm Post subject: Re: Sun disklabel? Do I have to use it? YES! If you wanna bo

nulljobb wrote:

Im trying to install a new disk in my Ultra 5 and cant get the Sun disklabel right. The disk turns out at about one tenth of the correct size, around 4GB instead of 40GB.

I had the same problem when trying to install on an ultra 10 (40GB disk).
I used to have that disk in a x86 pc.
The handbook said to just press enter for the first cylinder, but my disk would then turn out to be too small.
I had no idea that that was the problem, so I ended up removing the disk for more info (cylinders, heads, sectors), which of course this particular disk did not have, and wasted a lot of time searching on the maxtor site... (yes, you may laugh).
Anyway, I had to enter a number for the first as well as the last cylinder.